With Augmented Reality, decorating your home will never be the same

With the help of an interior designer, or going it alone, decorating your home always brought with it the risk of things not coming together the way you had envisioned – the lampshade didn’t actually fit the color scheme, the coffee table was too tall for your sofa, everything ended up too cluttered.

But interior design, thanks to a couple emergent technologies, is quickly being transformed. First on the scene, has been virtual reality (VR) technology. Whereas the mind’s eye and 2D drawings have their limits, VR hardware and software – like Facebook’s Oculus Go and Decorilla’s VR app – now allow shoppers to step foot into a digital model of the room they have in mind and make a decision they won’t regret.

And this year, as Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) Steve Koenig recently predicted at CES 2018, augmented reality (AR) is poised to further revolutionize the interior design industry. Without ever bringing a piece to your home, the AR apps in development will allow you to virtually ‘place’ furnishings in your home, eliminating the guesswork entailed in finding that one piece that ties the room together.

Augmented reality is the technique of overlaying computer graphics onto a user’s view of the physical world. In the case of the new IKEA Place app – one of the first implementations of AR tech in the interior design industry – users aim their smartphones at any spot in their home or office, and virtually place an IKEA item just where they want it. On their screens they’ll see the 3D, true-to-scale furnishing, just as it will look – no guessing, no measuring, no ordering and shipping back, no transporting back and forth from the store.

In what may be the year that AR technologies begin to be incorporated in our everyday lives, it will almost certainly transform interior design in particular. In addition to IKEA, Lowe’s and Pottery Barn have introduced AR catalogs late last year, built with Apple’s ARKit, a platform for developing AR apps for iPhone and iPad. And a number of startups will be developing AR apps to compliment the streamlined interior design services they provide.

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Author: bbaker

Brett Baker has over 20 years experience in film, television and video game production. His television work includes special effects animation for " VanPires" (1997) animated series and post production for "Teletubbies" (2001). His video game work includes titles such as William Shatner's "Tekwar" and" ChronoMaster" featuring the voices of Ron Perlman and Lolita Davidovich. His animation studio Exodus Entertainment, was responsible for the animation that resulted in Mattel® being award the master toy license for the Harry Potter® franchise in 2002. He received his M.F.A. in filmmaking in 2004 before going on to work on feature film projects such as "Gringo Wedding" in 2006 and "Get Smart" in 2008. He currently owns and is an animator and designer with his own agency, Axxis 3.
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